1999

The century is coming to an end and so is my visit to Egypt. As I often do on my last day, I got up early to watch the sunrise. Sitting out on the balcony in the mild morning air, I couldn’t see the sun but its effect on the Theban Mountain over the river was magnificent, turning the quiet riverscape to a misty blue with the glowing pink reflection of the rising sun on the distant hills as a backdrop. A few hot air balloons drifted lazily, high over the West Bank and I wished I too had that birds-eye view over this land that I love.

Staying in the luxurious Sonesta Hotel has been great, though we don’t seem to have spent much time taking advantage of its amenities. I have been down to the swimming pool only twice in the two weeks we’ve been here and then only to sit in the shade and read for a while, or to watch the feluccas sail by on the river in the late afternoon. Oddly enough, the thing that has impressed me most about this hotel, are the ladies toilets in the pool area. The first time I used these was hilarious. They are self-flushing! As this is the first time I have come across this innovation in Egypt, or anywhere else for that matter, I just couldn’t work out how this was happening. Was someone watching me in my cubicle? The taps on the hand-basins turn on by themselves too. Isn’t modern technology wonderful?

What a land of contrasts Egypt is. Here I am in the glamorous surroundings of a brand new five-star hotel, tickled by the novel plumbing, while my Egyptian friends on the West Bank live more or less as they have done for hundreds of years in what we in the west would consider very primitive conditions. It’s true that many now have satellite television, though sometimes no running water in their homes and it is this more than anything else that will change these people forever. How can they watch glossy ‘soaps’, American TV shows and music videos day after day and not become discontent with what they have. Very few people here have a telephone in their homes, but I’ve noticed on this trip quite a few cell phones appearing, glued to the ears of the younger men. How they love to talk!

Jenny and I spent the morning on the West Bank saying goodbye to Egyptian friends before going back to Luxor for lunch at the Amoun Restaurant, where we met David. I regret that we didn’t manage to arrange any trips with my friend Sam who arrived a few days ago, but that’s often the way things are here. It’s not always easy to make plans, especially to travel outside Luxor.

Our coach arrived to collect us from the hotel at 3.00pm for a six o’clock flight – much too early in my opinion and it meant waiting for hours in the gloomy departure lounge of Luxor airport feeling very sad to be leaving, as usual.

On our last full day in Egypt, we again returned to my favourite temple, the mortuary temple of Rameses III at Medinet Habu on the West Bank. We made the familiar journey over the river on the tireless workhorse that is the passenger ferry, with its battered decks strewn with any rubbish that had escaped being thrown or blown over the side. Sitting up on the top deck in the morning sunshine on a wooden bench polished by thousands of passengers, we could see far down the river to the north and south, while spread behind us was the whole vista of Luxor Corniche with the temple as its crowning glory. Usually it is only the tourists who sit on the uncovered top deck and of course the young guys and touts who hope to make some money out of them. I’d much rather sit there in the fresh air than in the cramped lower deck with fumes belching out over those too near to the engine room and where space is at a premium and always must be shared with bicycles, various animals and caged birds as well as bundles of shopping, sacks of rice or grain and the ferry vendors selling little bags of nuts and seeds. Jenny and I sat in the stern next to an old man with a stout stick who must have been at least a hundred and who nodded and smiled his toothless smile, saying ‘welcome’ over and over all the way to the West Bank. How I love the Luxor ferry!

At the dock we got off the ferry and had to fight off a barrage of aggressive taxi drivers before finding the arabeya to Qurna, which we took as far as the Colossi of Memnon. Getting off and going round to the front of the truck to pay the driver our 25 piastres each, I was aware of curious stares from groups of visitors gathered around several tourist coaches parked by the statues. We were obviously a distraction from the guides’ well-rehearsed monologues. After buying our tickets to Habu Temple at the taftish, we set off down the dusty track leading the village, stopping for a while on the way to watch a couple of vivid green bee-eaters sitting on a telephone wire.

Inside the temple, I wanted to look at the various festival scenes. On the south exterior wall of the temple there is a calendar of festivals which names over 60 festival days in a year, most of them fixed dates in the civil calendar. These were occasions when the king, or his representative, the High Priest, would celebrate the feast in the name of the people of Egypt, offering to the various deities to ensure that order, or ma’at, would be maintained. The second court at Medinet Habu was the ‘Festival Hall’ and its main function is reflected in the reliefs on the surrounding walls.

On the east wall of the second court, the gods of Upper and Lower Egypt lead Rameses III to a shrine containing the Theban Triad, Amun, Mut and Khons. On the north wall, the king is ritually prepared to take part in the fertility Festival of Min which originally took place on the first day of the lunar month at the beginning of harvest, Shemu. At the west end of the north wall the King, wearing the ‘blue crown’ is carried out of his palace on a portable throne, followed by fan-bearers and surrounded by priests and officials and the royal children. Musicians lead the procession, playing trumpets, flutes and sistra, while drummers beat out the pace. Further along the King performs sacrifices at the shrine of Min, offering ‘bread, beer, oxen, fowl and every good thing’ In the next scene the statue of the fertility god Min is in full view, borne aloft on carrying poles draped in metal-studded red cloth and a chest containing his emblematic lettuce plants is carried behind. In front of this are the King, this time wearing the ‘red crown’, the Queen, a row of priests carrying standards and a while bull which may have represented one of the aspects of Min. The subsequent order of the festival rites gets a bit lost and is partly on the east wall and partly on the north. There is a lovely scene of the King cutting a sheaf of wheat, a ritual act of sympathetic magic designed to ensure a good harvest, the sheaf being presented to the god to be blessed. With statues of the royal ancestors looking on, the King finally releases four doves, symbols of the ‘Four sons of Horus’, who carry news of the ritual to the four corners of the universe.

The south wall of the second court depicts an even more important annual festival performed at Medinet Habu, that of the god Sokar. This festival traditionally took place on the eve of the planting season, Peret, and lasted for ten days. The god Sokar represented the dark potent counterpart of Min in the underworld and was assimilated with Osiris, also an underworld deity. The first five days of the festival, (not depicted in the second court) concentrate on the preparation of ‘Osiris beds’, wooden frames containing grain which were planted and germinated, again an aspect of sympathetic magic embodying the symbol of resurrection and fruition. In the second court the reliefs begin once the festival gets underway on the sixth day, which was a major holiday for the people of Thebes at this time. At the west end of the south wall the celebrations begin at dawn with the King, Rameses III, offering a heaped platter of food to the god. Behind the hawk-headed Sokar-Osiris is the ‘Great Ennead’ of Memphis who were the god’s companions. We see the cult statue of Sokar in his portable shrine, the henu-barque, with its aegis of an antelope head and little birds on the prow. For the public ceremonies the barque of Sokar was taken out of the god’s sanctuary in the temple by the priests and dragged around the walls on a sledge pulled by ropes. Many standards and other divine barques are depicted in the procession that wended its way through the Theban necropolis and it is easy to imagine a great day of feasting when the whole Theban population would join in the celebrations. In the reliefs the King is seen pulling the end of the rope, joined by officials, priests and the royal children, but the barque itself, in a later scene, is carried on the shoulders of priests. One unusual scene in the procession shows the standard of Nefertem, another Memphite god, in the form of a long pole capped by a lotus flower and two plumes and this is followed by a standard of Horus as a falcon wearing the ‘double-crown’. The final stage of the festival is depicted on the eastern wall where the procession is joined by barques of five Memphite goddesses and several other deities, priests carrying offerings to be placed upon the altars, officials and the King’s retinue. The festival of Sokar, so colourfully depicted in the second court, was a festival of renewal, for both the land and the King and was confirmation for the local community that the annual cycle of harmony and growth would carry on for the coming year.

Jenny and I spent almost the whole day in Medinet Habu with only a short break for lunch at the Rameses Cafe and by the time we made our return journey over the river the sun was setting in an apricot glow over the Theban Mountain. As the tall white billowing sails of feluccas scudded by the ferry in the evening breeze, I tried hard not to remember that this would be my last sunset here for a while.

This morning Jenny and I walked along the Luxor Corniche to the Mummification Museum, a relatively new museum that I hadn’t visited before. It is housed by the river in a very modern building which is entered down steps to river level. Unfortunately when we got there it was closed and we didn’t have a ‘plan B’. Wandering back towards the temple I noticed that there were some new traffic signs. Traffic lights, an innovation here in Luxor, had appeared a little while ago, but needless to say Egyptian drivers still acted as though they weren’t there and it would seem that these signs have been erected to try to encourage responsible behaviour on the road. I wondered why they were written in English….

We cut up through the covered Tourist Bazaar near the Etap Hotel, where prices are supposed to be fixed and shopkeepers are not allowed to hassle tourists. This bazaar is more relaxed than the local suq, although prices do tend to be higher. It is crammed with stores selling souvenirs – jewellery, tee-shirts and tourist galabeyas, papyrus painted with Tutankhamun’s golden mask and lots of brass and inlaid furniture. Young Egyptian guys stand outside their shops trying to attract foreigners without appearing to hassle. It must be a hard life, especially with people like me who never buy these mass-produced souvenirs.

After a coffee in the Amoun restaurant we continued on to the local bazaar which is much more lively. After the first couple of hundred metres where tourist stalls are most common the suq becomes a market place for local shopping. Men sit outside coffee shops smoking shisha and arguing while black-clad women squat on the ground beside their baskets of fruit or eggs. Small flocks of goats or sheep wander around untended and donkeys pull flat carts laden with fruit or vegetables, trying to avoid the boys on bicycles who zig-zag in and out between the stalls. Further along the pavement becomes a dirt road with missing covers from the manholes that always seem to be overflowing with sewerage. There are many bargains to be had in this part of the suq, where everything from bolts of fabric to crockery as well as food can be found. There are bicycle repair shops, tailors with their treadle machines who can run up a galabeya or shirt in an hour or so and many shops selling genuine shishas (water-pipes) rather than the tourist ones. The only thing I really dislike about this part of the bazaar are the haunches of dark fly-covered meat which hang outside the butchers’ stalls. If I wasn’t already vegetarian, I’m sure I would become one after a trip through the local suq.

Yesterday Jenny and I spent the day with friends. We took a bus to el-Arabet and visited my friend David in his house there, spending a lovely morning with him drinking his coffee while he read us some of his fabulous short stories about life in an Egyptian village. Later back in Luxor we met up with my friend Sam who had just arrived here with a couple of other friends from England and we hoped to do some trips with them before we leave.

Today we got down to some ‘work’ at Luxor Temple. I wanted to photograph the Opet reliefs of Tutankhamun. Luxor Temple, anciently known as ‘Ipet-resyt’ or ‘the Southern Opet’, served as a focal point for the Opet festival. Once a year the divine image of Amun with his consort Mut and their son Khonsu would journey in their sacred barques from Karnak Temples to the temple at Luxor, at some periods overland and at others by river, to celebrate the festival. Opet’s primary function was religious but the festival was also significant in maintaining the king’s divine role. On the west and east walls of Amenhotep III’s tall colonnade are the superbly executed reliefs of the Opet procession to and from Karnak. Depending on the time of day, the shallow carvings can look insignificant, but when the light is just right the shadows throw them into a dazzling story in sharp relief. Unfortunately, when one wall looks good, the other is in deep shade and they are probably best viewed in their complete state at night when the temple walls are lit from below.

Opet was one of the principle festivals of ancient Thebes, taking place in the season of Akhet, the season of inundation. It commemorated the annual Nile flood with its symbolism of renewal, both for the land of Egypt and the king himself, the great procession and following ceremonies recreating the drama and mysteries of the god Amun and his consort Mut. During the Dynasty XVIII reign of Amenhotep III, the barque of Amun containing the statue of the god was carried by priests from his shrine at Karnak, first to the Temple of Khonsu, then to the Temple of Mut, where it was joined by the statue of the goddess in her own barque and that of their child Khonsu, to journey together to Luxor Temple. It is likely that at this period that the king himself also took part in the ceremonies.

The west wall of the colonnade is not well preserved, but some of the remaining reliefs are beautiful. Here the story unfolds: preparations are made for the feast, beasts slaughtered and altars piled with offerings. Crowds of onlookers watch as acrobats and dancing girls accompany the priests who carry the barques to the Nile where they are towed upstream. Finally offerings are made to Amun, Mut and Khonsu. The east wall depicts the return journey of the barques to Karnak amid much celebration, culminating with more offerings and thanksgivings at the temple.

It is not certain just what took place while the god and his consort were enshrined in the inner depths of Luxor Temple. It is likely that the king would have undergone a repeat of the coronation ceremony to be rejuvenated for another year and that the deities, Amun and Mut would have performed the divine rite of union which kept the world in balance. It is a lovely thought that the festival in modern times, under the Islamic guise of a celebration of the birthday of Sheikh Abu l’Hagag, is still carried on in Luxor every year when model boats (barques) are carried out of the Abu l’Haggag mosque to tour the town on floats.

The 7.00am bus to Aswan was a big mistake. Jenny and I had shunned the air-conditioned ‘Superjet’ as being too touristy and instead, bought tickets on the less expensive but slower ‘Kul‘, or local bus. The tickets cost us LE6 (60p) return for a journey lasting about three hours. Taking our places in the queue (actually more like a free-for-all) we spotted the empty wide seat at the back of the bus which promised plenty of leg-room and headed for this, settling our backpacks and cameras around our feet. The bus was quite full when it set off and making ourselves comfortable among the Egyptian families with their ’luggage’ consisting of carrier bags and cardboard cartons tied with string, sacks of corn and live chickens or ducks in palm-leaf crates crammed into the overhead luggage racks, we sat back ready to enjoy the journey. It didn’t take us long to realise why none of the locals had sat in the spacious back seat which we shared with a lady from New Zealand. I was sitting next to the emergency door and every time the bus stopped or swerved (which was frequently) the seat flew off its base and deposited me on the floor at the bottom of the stairwell. I eventually managed to wedge myself in with my feet up on top of a hatch but after a few minutes discovered that my legs were resting on what seemed to be an engine cover that was burning hot, with vents giving off nauseating diesel fumes. There were no opening windows and the stuffy air inside the bus was stiflingly hot. The engine noise and grating gears of the ancient rattling bus, loud Arabic music and raised voices of the passengers did not make for a tranquil journey. By the time we arrived in Aswan after seemingly stopping to pick up and drop passengers and their animals in every little town along the Nile, we both felt quite ill.

After some fresh air and a restorative cup of coffee near the bus station we were feeling better, so Jenny and I negotiated a taxi to Philae Port for LE20. We were heading for the Temple of Isis, which was moved from Philae to Agilika Island after the building of the old Aswan Dam. At the port, we had to negotiate for a boat to take us to the island and bring us back again, eventually settling on a small motor boat piloted by a young Nubian called Ibrahim. For LE35 he said he would wait and bring us back from the island in two hours. At Mid-day the sun at its high-point was scorching with not even a breeze to ruffle the waves on the river water, but the temple itself was almost deserted. Most sensible tourists had gone back to Aswan for lunch. The sleeping guards and tourist police took no notice of us and we had a lovely hassle-free couple of hours wandering all over the island before hurrying back to the dock and our waiting boatman, who we found also fast asleep under a heap of blankets in the bottom of his boat. Bless him!

Back in town, the taxi dropped us off at the New Nubian Museum which I visited when I was in Aswan with my son a year ago. Unfortunately it was closed when we got there, so Jenny and I walked down the hill to the Old Cataract Hotel for tea – I had told my friend how lovely it was to sit out on the terrace overlooking Elephantine Island, another happy memory from last year. To my surprise, the policeman on the gate wouldn’t let us in, telling us that now only residents were allowed to have tea on the terrace. This has always been a favourite place for tourists and I have been several times before, but no amount of smiling, speaking a bit of Arabic or even pleading would change his mind. Eventually, after baksheesh was produced, he agreed to let us have a quick peek inside the hotel because Jenny so wanted to see it, but he sent someone to come and look for us before our allotted five minutes were up. We decided that we must look even more scruffy and dishevelled than we had thought.

To kill some time we walked through the bazaar along the whole length of Aswan, savouring the flavour of Africa in this southernmost Egyptian town. In ancient times it was from here that emissaries of the pharaohs left on the journey into Nubia, where they could obtain rich sources of gold and Nubia itself was the passage from Egypt to the exotic African lands beyond. Many pharaohs built small temples and fortresses along the banks of the Nile in Nubia and exported ebony, ivory, incense and precious metals and minerals back to Egypt, as well as Nubian slaves. Aswan is still different from the rest of Egypt – a vibrancy and warmth of colour can be found here which really makes it feel like a gateway to Africa. Eventually we found ourselves near the railway station and not relishing a return journey on the infernal bus, we booked first class tickets on the night train back to Luxor.

After a quick bite to eat in one of the many restaurants on the Corniche, it was back to the Nubian Museum, which by 5.30pm was open again and we spent a couple of hours wandering around this wonderful cool place looking at the artefacts and reading the very informative history-boards. There is so much to see here, especially outside in the gardens, that we ran out of time and had to jump in a taxi to get back to the railway station to catch our train at 8.00pm. The first class ticket cost us all of LE22 each (a little over £2.00) – but what a luxury and we both agreed was worth every last piastre!

Last night Jenny and I had been invited to dinner at the home of Jennifer, who lives on the West Bank. We had a lovely evening with good food and good conversation and lots of music and laughter. At some point we got onto the subject of camels and how much Jenny would like to ride one. Jennifer’s husband Mandour immediately offered to take us for a camel ride the next day – which I flatly refused, but Jenny excitedly accepted. My recent encounters with riding animals had been less than successful and the thought of being uncomfortably perched high above the ground on a layer of blankets on top of a hump, trotting along dirt tracks or crowded tarmac roads did not appeal. Maybe if this was the only means of transport and I needed to cross a desert, I would think again, but this particular trip I did not consider necessary. So this morning Jenny went off alone for her camel adventure and I had the morning off to wander the streets of Luxor, meeting my friend David at the Amoun restaurant for coffee. This was the first time we’d managed to meet up on this trip so far and I thought he really wasn’t looking very well.

At lunchtime I crossed the river and met Jenny at the Rameses Cafe at Medinet Habu as we had agreed. She enjoyed her camel ride very much and had organised to hire a horse from the stables for later in the week, having reawakened an old passion for riding. We had lunch (lentil soup), chatted with my friend Salah and browsed his bookstall before deciding to spend the afternoon at the Ramesseum.

Walking along the dusty road to Qurna, several tour buses passed going in the other direction towards the bridge, a good sign that the temple would be fairly quiet. As usual around the Ramesseum area, there were many small ragged children selling little handmade peg-dolls and Jenny bought a couple just to get them off our backs. They kept surrounding us in groups of four or five, tugging and pulling at our clothes and stepping in front of us so that we couldn’t move, asking for ‘Bon-bon’ (sweets) and ‘stylo’ (pens) or baksheesh, constantly calling out their predictable mantra of ‘What’s your name?’. These children are enterprising, well-meaning and obviously in need of our cash, but they are very persistent and can become tiresome and I have long ago given up trying to have a reasonable conversation with them. After Jenny bought the little dolls, she must have been spotted from the village because a dozen or more older children were suddenly running down the hill towards us. Luckily we had arrived at the temple and we hurried through the gate into safety. Tourist police sat dozing in a shelter at the entrance. In their badly-fitting white uniforms held together with black leather belts and crossed straps and holding mean-looking machine guns, they woke up long enough to chase away the children and all became peaceful again.

Jenny went off to explore the temple while I concentrated on photographing Rameses’ battle reliefs on the Second Pylon and the depictions of barques of various gods in the ‘Astronomical Room’. The light today was just perfect for this. Later, one of the guards I had met last year brought us both a cup of tea and we sat in the shade of the dimly-lit hypostyle hall and chatted with him for half an hour. Afterwards, every time I pointed the lens of my camera at something, the guard was looking over my shoulder and shouting ‘Action!’ just as the shutter clicked. This was quite funny for a while….. !

In the late afternoon Jenny and I went back on the ferry to Luxor and to our hotel. We were staying in the newest and smartest hotel in town, the Sonesta, but had spent very little time there so far. Tonight we decided to splash out and have dinner in the hotel restaurant, which cost a fortune but was very nice. An early night because tomorrow we are off to Aswan.

I don’t know what it is that attracts me to the goddess Sekhmet. When all is said and done she is a nasty piece of work, the instrument of vengeance used against mankind by the sun god Re. I was thinking about Sekhmet today when Jenny and I visited the destroyed mortuary temple of Amenhotep III on the West Bank.

Most visitors know this site as the ‘Colossi of Memnon’. While many tourists will tumble out of their coaches for a five-minute photo-opportunity in front the giant statues of Amenhotep III, far fewer give a thought to the huge temple which once stood behind these colossal figures that guarded the entrance. At first glance the ‘temple’ looks like a scrubby disused piece of ground, but since 1970 excavators have been discovering more to this site than first meets the eye. The structure was robbed in ancient times, when much of the stone was taken by Merenptah to be reused in the construction of his own temple. Many fragmentary objects and architectural elements, once part of Amenhotep’s temple, have now been recovered from below the surface and some have been preserved and placed on concrete pedestals on the site. We were shown over parts of the site by a very helpful guide. The most fascinating aspect of this temple for me, is that it had a massive quantity of statuary, especially monuments to the goddess Sekhmet. Examples of these large stone statues can now be seen in just about every museum in the world and there are a number of them at Karnak, in the open-air museum and in the Temple of Mut. It has been suggested that Amenhotep depicted the ‘Litany of Sekhmet’ by including a standing and a seated statue of the goddess for each day of the year, a fact mentioned in ancient texts. Many of these sculptures were later re-used by other pharaohs in their own monuments.

So who was Sekhmet? She is most often depicted as a lion-headed woman, wearing a long wig and a solar disc with cobra-uraeus on her head and is either seated on a block or standing holding a papyrus sceptre before her. As consort of the god Ptah and mother of Nefertem, her main place of worship was at Memphis, though she is represented in many Egyptian temples. She is often associated with or considered an aspect of other female deities, notably Hathor and Mut, but also Pakhet in Middle Egypt and Bastet in the Delta. Like everything in ancient Egypt, Sekhmet had a dual aspect, seen as both a healer and a destroyer.

There is an ancient story about how the ‘Eye of Re’ defeated the sun god’s enemies. In the story, Sekhmet was considered the daughter of the sun god Re (possibly as an aspect of Hathor). When her father (who ruled the world) was an old man, humanity began to turn against him, thinking that he could no longer keep the world in perfect order and it would recede into darkness and chaos. Learning of the plots against him, Re calls a council of the gods who advise him to take vengeance and when his enemies hear of this, they flee into the deserts of Egypt. In the myth, Sekhmet/Hathor becomes the ‘Eye of Re’ who is sent out into the world to pursue her father’s enemies and she becomes a deity of invincible destructive powers, rampaging through the deserts exulting in blood-lust and slaughter. It is perhaps at this point that the gods realise that there will be no humans left on earth to make food offerings to them on the temple altars and they have a change of heart. But by this time, Sekhmet is out of control. While she is resting before her next onslaught, a messenger is sent to Aswan to bring back a large quantity of red ochre, which is mixed with beer to resemble blood and left in jars where the goddess will find them. When she wakes up Sekhmet is delighted by her ‘bloody’ refreshment, drinks deeply and becomes thoroughly intoxicated. She is then taken home and the rest of mankind is saved from the destruction of the goddess.

Sekhmet became a goddess of war, accompanying the king into battle, causing storms and floods and fierce winds or destroying enemies with the fiery heat from her own body. She was a goddess who needed to be constantly appeased, but she also became known in her more benign aspect as a goddess of magic and healing, renowned for driving away sickness and epidemics. Amenhotep was known to be a sick man towards the end of his life and perhaps this is why the king had so many statues of Sekhmet placed in his temple. Egyptian mythology is a very complex subject and there is much more to the personality of this goddess in terms of symbolism, than at first is realised.

Egyptians right up until modern times seemed to hold Sekhmet’s statues in awe and maybe this is why I do too.

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